July 19, 2022 –California’s Chinook salmon haven’t been able to reach the McCloud River since 1942, when the construction of Shasta Dam blocked the fish from swimming upstream and sealed off their spawning areas in the cold mountain waters near Mount Shasta.
After 80 years, endangered winter-run chinook are about to swim in the river once again.
State and federal wildlife officials collected about 20,000 winter-run salmon eggs from the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery near Redding and drove them for three hours to a campground on the banks of the McCloud River.
Members of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, who have long sought to return salmon to the river where their ancestors lived, held a ceremony as the eggs arrived in a cooler.
During the ceremony, Sisk and others sang as two women carried the cooler with the salmon eggs, leading a procession around a fire as children followed.
Taylor Lipscomb, the hatchery’s manager, reached into the cooler and lifted out a cup filled with orange salmon eggs, then handed it to one of the children.
Each child participated, lowering a cupful into the water and tipping it until the eggs tumbled out and settled on a metal screen.
Last year, the water flowing from Shasta Dam got so warm that the Sacramento River turned lethal for winter-run salmon eggs. Most of the eggs and young fish died. State biologists estimated that only 2.56 percent of the eggs hatched and survived to swim downriver, one of the lowest estimates of “egg-to-fry” survival yet.